MORE ZEAL THAN SENSE

Written:Written before November 26 (December 9), 1912Published:First published in 1954 in the JournalKommunistNo. 6.

      Printed from the original.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1971,

      Moscow,Volume 36,

      pages207-208.Translated:Andrew RothsteinTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive.You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work, as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

Eachhas his own preoccupations: the proletariat sees
the need for peace, and the capitalists look to the “
patriotic” examples provided by the Balkan War. To each his
own. The workers insist that in terms of human life a Balkan
revolution would have cost a hundred times less than the
Balkan War, and would have produced democratic results
a thousand times broader and more stable.

Thecapitalists—both the “Right” and the liberals,
all the way up to our Progressists and Cadets—are
straining to prove that whereas the banded capitalists in the
Balkans have pocketed so much, the banded capitalists
of Britain, France and Russia, as an “entente”, could
have made off with ever so much more.

OneAmerican “patriot”, a patriot of the money-bag,
managed to find out that some ships in the Greek navy
had been built by Greek millionaire magnates at their
own expense.

ThisAmerican Guchkov or Maklakov hastened to
advertise and play up the grand patriotic example in every way.
He wrote: “Now if only our country’s shores and all our
overseas trade were protected by giant dreadnoughts calledMorgan, Astor, VanderbiltandRockefeller! With such
an example before them, the people would grumble less
about the concentration of capital in the hands of
billionaires and about the unequal distribution of wealth!”

Patriotic,but impractical, say the American workers
laughing. Gentlemen, go ahead with your splendid scheme,
we’re allforit. Until now, the Rockefellers, Morgans,
etc., over here in America have been hiring private
detachments of armed men to protect their property and fightstrikers. Let the billionaires now give the people a clear
picture showing that the “external” defence of the “state”
isdefence of the monopolies and the profitsof the owners
of our trusts! Let’s see what lesson the American workers
will learn as they contemplate these super-dreadnoughts
namedMorgan, Rockefeller, etc.: will it be patriotic
emotion or socialist convictions? Will they become more
servile to the capitalists, or will they demand with greater
firmness that all trusts (manufacturers’ associations),
all the property of the trusts, should be handed over to the
workers, to society as a whole?

...TheAmerican “patriot” has overdone it....